Rural US Internet: not great, but truly poor in the South

The many blessings of rural life generally need to be set against one huge drawback: bad Internet connections. Both urban and rural Internet use have soared in the US over the last few years, but some new number-crunching from the US Department of Agriculture puts a number on the urban/rural gap: 9.3 percent. 72.6 percent of urban Americans use the Internet somewhere (though not necessarily at home), but among rural residents that number falls to 63.3 percent.

The reasons for the discrepancy aren't hard to come by; as the USDA's "Rural Broadband At A Glance 2009" suggests, the difference is likely chalked up to "the higher cost and limited availability of broadband Internet in rural areas." But despite the higher cost and lower availability in all rural areas, Internet access is surprisingly variable when you break down the country by geography.

For instance, Internet usage at home is 61.7 percent in the urban South, a number actually on par with the rural Northeast (61 percent). The rural South does far worse, turning in the lowest scores in the country. Only 46.4 percent of rural Southerners have Internet access at home, making the rural South the only part of the US to see in-home Internet usage rates of less than 50 percent.

Data source: USDA

And the lower usage rates aren't due to some "farmers don't need the Internet" attitude. Internet access is about far more than Facebook and YouTube; between 2005 and 2007, farmers' use of the Internet for business more than doubled from 30 percent to 63 percent. And, for household use, "online purchases now replace the once common Sears and Roebuck catalog."

Making Internet access faster and more affordable isn't a balm for every woe—"local banks must compete with Internet-only banks," for instance—but it does so many good things that the USDA wants to make the service more available for those who want it (though the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that a good chunk of those without any Internet access at all don't actually want to be online).

To do so, the agency has a new $2.5 billion pot of cash that it was given as part of the broadband money from the recently-passed stimulus bill (the rest will be doled out by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration). USDA, NTIA, and the Federal Communications Commission are hosting a public meeting in Washington on March 10 to start thinking through how best to issue grants and loans with the money, an indication that they intend to move quickly on projects.

Unfortunately, good data on Internet speeds and availability is lacking, largely due to weaknesses in FCC data collection. "Broadband" has long been defined as anything faster than 200Kbps, for instance, and an ISP is said to "serve" an entire ZIP code if it serves even a single customer there. At least the USDA is aware of the issue, and its report calls out the FCC over the data, saying that "results reported here should be interpreted with these limitations in mind."

One hopes that, given the limitations of the data, grants and loans for rural areas will be well-targeted and effective, though we'd feel a lot better about that possibility if the USDA had some truly excellent data to begin with.